We are surrounded by stories - the stories that make up our own life, the stories that make up the lives of our family and friends, the dramas on the TV, in the news on social media. I went to see the film 'Lion' this week.. my goodness what a powerful emotionally engaging story that is.We and the world seem to be made up of stories and some of them move us greatly.

I had an email this week from a close friend who told me that she had started writing children's stories again 'I have started writing again and it seems to help be have a balance... it is an escape from academia... and a way to create new realities.' I recognised the wisdom in these words that it is important to have spaces in which to create that are different to the spaces we normally inhabit for work. And the things we create are often stories.. quite apart from any other artefact that emerges.

In the last couple of months I have been cultivating a space with one of the members of my band (G) in order to try and create a musical. Every song in it is a story and together they make a single overarching story.  This is a significant undertaking in time, effort and challenge. We began in November throwing some ideas around and shaping a narrative and I'm now well and truly inhabiting this space on a daily basis. I know I'm fully engaged when I can't leave something alone I have to keep going back in and tinkering and I wake up with an idea of how to improve something, or the idea comes to me when I'm doing something else.

Our process is fundamentally a story making and story telling process through words and music.  Over many years G has written many songs with some great tunes. He is very talented. We began by creating a narrative that provided scope for incorporating the songs. It's a typical boy meets girl, they fall in love, they have a baby and fall out with parents, they struggle, they grow apart, he messes up, they realise they do love each and come back together so there is a happy ending. We have selected 25 of G's songs and effectively we are repurposing them as the objects in the story. We will have a narrator but the emotional engagement will be through the songs.  So my contribution has been to develop the narrative (the spoken words of the narrator) and re-write the lyrics so that they reflect the story.  Like most things the more effort you put in the more you get out and this week I have put a lot of effort in rewording ten of the 28 songs.  I have put all our recordings onto my website and I listen to the tune while I rewrite the words. G is away at the moment so I have been emailing the revised songs to him for his approval. The process is one of adaptation but the final effect will be to create something entirely new.. It fits the idea that much of our creativity involves  taking something and combining it with something else to make something new... in this case we are taking existing tunes repositioning them within a narrative to produce a new song.... then all the songs and the narrative add up to hopefully a new and substantial (for us) creative work - a musical story..that has never existed before.. Then we will move to the next stage which is performing it with the help and involvement of other people..   I think this picture which I adapted from an  picture by David Kananga nicely captures our process.
 
source http://wombflashforest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/soundtracks-2-methods_11.html

Yes it is really good to have a space for creativity that is very different to the spaces we  use to express our creativity in our working life. Its not so much a particular physical space in fact I realised that this type of project happens in lots of different spaces.... we have a rehearsal room (specialist space) where we play (experiment and try things out) and record, but the work of creating can be done anywhere.. sitting here at my computer, out for a walk on the hill...(in fact that is a good space), strumming a guitar in the living room or driving somewhere. It is an ecology in which there is a constellation of places and spaces for both of us but we only physically come together in one space/place the rehearsal room.

Invention takes place in a combination of physical spaces that contain within them the mental/emotional spaces in which words, lines, stories, images and tunes can be imagined, searched for, discovered, played with, refined and recorded. While its possible to be creative without technology (you can hum a tune and put words to it and sing it) technology really facilitates the process. We use instruments, recording devices, computer and resources on the internet (rhymezone is particularly useful) and the internet (my website) enables us to curate our recordings and narratives, and communicate and share ideas via email as they emerge, rather than waiting for some future moment.

Here's one of our songs G singing and playing guitar me on drums  'It happened Suddenly' 

​One of the great joys in life is to discover something that we did not know. Sometimes it’s by chance but often it emerges through deliberate acts of searching in order to find out. We explore to put ourselves into the places and spaces with highest potential to find what we are looking for and often discover other things along the way. This is the simplest act of exploration and it's something that is innate to being human.

Exploration occurs in all non-sessile (not fixed) animal species. It's the way in which organisms make sense of their environment and change their environment if they have to. It's a fundamental part of an organisms ecology for surviving: an organism's life depends on the success of it's explorations to find food and water if they are a land animal, security (safe places to rest) and procreation (they need to find mates to propagate their species). Exploration is programmed into the DNA of life and is a fundamental process in the ecology of every organism and every ecosystem.
 
This goes for people too. The history of mankind is a history of exploration - countless small steps and few giant leaps. Only through exploration have we come to understand the world and the universe we inhabit. There is no other way of achieving this. Every period of history, every culture and every advance in knowledge and technology is the product of many explorations, many of which did not succeed, and often unique to an individual who was motivated to explore something that no-one else had.
 
To explore or the act of exploring are used as 'transitive verbs' to denote either 1) systematic investigation, study of, search for or analysis, testing or experimentation or 2) less systematic forms of searching eg. to look into something, to become familiar with, to get a sense of.... Exploration and exploring involve travelling physically, virtually and mentally into places and spaces that are unknown or unfamiliar. Exploration is one of the ways in which we can engage all of our senses - remember when you visited a place you had never been to before and you experienced the sights, sounds, smells and pure physicality and mystery of that space that triggered all sorts of thoughts and emotions.

​To explore or the act of exploring are used as 'transitive verbs' to denote either 1) systematic investigation, study of, search for or analysis, testing or experimentation or 2) less systematic forms of searching eg. to look into something, to become familiar with, to get a sense of.... Exploration and exploring involve travelling physically, virtually and mentally into places and spaces that are unknown or unfamiliar. Exploration is one of the ways in which we can engage all of our senses - remember when you visited a place you had never been to before and you  experienced the sights, sounds, smells and pure physicality and mystery of that space that triggered all sorts of thoughts and emotions.

We explore to experience the world and to learn and understand it, and often ourselves, better. The number of contexts for exploration is only limited by our imagination and that is pretty limitless. My Christmas read this year is a book called ‘Pragmatic Imagination’(1) after I got through the glowing endorsements, of which there were many, I came across these words, ‘efficacy in the world today requires a productive entanglement of imagination and action’. I think nowhere is this productive entanglement more apparent than when we engage in exploration regardless of whether we are exploring the far reaches of the universe or are own limitations and capabilities: in fact the two are often interlinked. Indeed life itself is an exploration from the moment we play with our first toy to the moment we close our eyes for the last time.

Exploration can be a psychological process of examining ourselves, our own thinking, emotions, purposes and actions, and or a cognitive process of inquiry involving the investigation of ideas or problems in any subject or any context or circumstance.  It can involve travelling through physical spaces and landscapes that are new to us, for example when we explore a new place. And it can involve journeys in and through new virtual environments, using technological tools that are new to us and the new social interactions they present. It can involve contexts and phenomenon in our unfolding present, reconstructions of the past or imaginings of the future.

Each discipline or professional domain develops its own tools and methodologies for conducting explorations that are relevant to its particular field of knowledge and practice. For example, I once practised as a geologist working in Saudi Arabia (photo right) I travelled hundreds of miles across the country exploring the geology then used analytical techniques to date the rocks and discover their chemistry to deduce their origin. Later I worked as an exploration geologist searching for mineral deposits in western Saudi Arabia. I used satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques and prospecting methods on the ground, I mapped and recorded what I found on aerial photographs, I conducted geochemical surveys and all used all sorts of imagination and reasoning based on the knowledge I had acquired through study and my experiences while conducting exploration, but often finding something useful was a matter of chance, of putting myself into the areas of highest potential, of walking a little bit further up a dry river bed because I just had a feeling that I might discover something. And that sort of hunch or gut feeling drives a lot of what I call 'wandering with intent': mostly nothing comes of it but sometimes our persistence pays off and we discover something that is significant to us.

We explore when we innovate and we explore when we are not sure where to go next. Exploration underlies research and it underlies, what John Dewey called 'productive inquiry', 'finding out what we need to know in order to do the things we need to do'. Exploring is an attitude or orientation requiring the willingness to engage with things that are not known or are poorly understood. It may involve overcoming fear and anxiety and dealing with uncertainty but also unimagined affordance. Exploration involves a physical and mental journey as we venture into the unknown or unfamiliar and it requires courage, confidence and self-belief that we will be able to cope with whatever emerges. Being willing to explore, to put ourselves into unfamiliar contexts to deal with unfamiliar situations and problems is an important orientation that we need in life - especially when life is disrupted or when we need to break away from existing routines in order to develop.

​Exploring in order to develop something like an idea, is a necessary part of creation. Being willing to explore, and the act of exploration are important features of a self-determined ecology for learning or achieving something new. Exploration can be in any part of our ecologies for learning and achieving(2). It's the means by which we search for, develop awareness and begin to realise the potential of the affordance for something in any aspect of our life. It can be undertaken to understand the contexts and situations we are in - the problems, challenges and opportunities we have to deal with. The potential, limitations and constraints of the spaces we have at our disposal. To find and develop resources we need to achieve something, and to develop new relationships. The importance of exploration is manifest in the rich vocabulary we have developed to describe and give meaning to what we do when we are exploring. Common expressions like searching, seeking, questing, trying, playing, experimenting, investigating, developing, tinkering, messing around, poking around, sucking it to see what might happen, adapting, tweaking, examining, testing, probing, scanning, hunting, evaluating, inquiring, questioning, surveying, mapping, sifting, reviewing, studying, delving or digging into, having a look, convey not only the sense of activity and behaviour but also the mental processes that accompany our 'doings'.
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The challenge for educators is to encourage learners to explore, to embark on journeys into what is unknown to them in order to learn. Given the way higher education is structured and assessed many might feel that we squeeze out much of the affordance for more explorative and discovery-oriented forms of learning, and this is the challenge educators face all over the world.
 
Developing students’ capability and capacity to explore is not simply a matter of developing the requisite knowledge and skills to explore in a particular domain. It also requires the building of confidence and attitudes, orientations and character like the willingness to take risks, to work with uncertainty and environments that are often not well ordered, to persist in the face of disappointment, and to try again if efforts fail to realise a goal. It also requires learners to harness their pragmatic imaginations to not only visualise a fuzzy goal but to imagine and turn into action the steps to achieving such a goal. To follow such a pathway without being sure of reward requires self-belief and trust in one’s own processes and practices. Learning environments that foster these imaginings and behaviours have become increasingly rarer as our higher education system and society for that matter has become more risk averse and where teaching efficiency and predictable outcomes are the most valued indicators of a quality education. Developing the explorative capacity of students is a challenge to educators and educational institutions all over the world, but it is something we have to do if we are to enable each new generation to solve the problems created by previous generations.

Lifewide Magazine is our vehicle for exploration: every issue explores a theme that is relevant to our educational mission. In issue #18 we explore the idea and practice of exploring to develop a better understanding of the way in which exploration features in our ecologies for learning, development and achievement. Eighteen contributors share their perspectives on, and experiences of, exploration. Through this exploration we might recognise the importance of exploration in many aspects of life and its importance in personal development and the achievement of things which we value. Through this exploration we might also recognise shortcomings in the affordance for self-directed, self-motivated exploration in undergraduate education. While exploring what was already known about exploration it struck me that very little has been written about the concept of exploration so I hope that our Magazine will help expand awareness of its importance in learning and education and in the achievement of goals that are of both personal and societal value.
 
You can download a free copy of 'Exploring Exploration' Lifewide Magazine #18 from the magazine page. In the next issue of Lifewide Magazine (July 2017) we will focus on exploration in disciplinary and professional contexts and we welcome contributions from our readers. If you would like to contribute please get in touch.

Norman Jackson 
Commissioning Editor Lifewide Magazine

Citations
1  Pendleton-Jullian and Seely Brown J (2016) Pragmatic Imagination
2 Jackson, N.J.Exploring Learning Ecologies LULU
3 Exploring Exploration Lifewide Magazine #18
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